Rackspace Startup Program Spotlight: Friendeo

Way back in 1992, long before the inception of the Rackspace Startup Program[1], rock & roll storyteller Bruce Springsteen wrote “Man came by to hook up my cable TV…We settled in for the night my baby and me…We switched ’round and ’round ’til half-past dawn…There was 57 channels and nothing on.” Today there are 500+ channels of television and nothing on. Friendeo solves this problem by organizing all Internet video based on social context. The result is a video stream that is relevant, fun, entertaining and available anywhere, anytime.

Friendeo[2] is Pandora for video providing a personalized video entertainment experience on all devices. Based in Blacksburg, Virginia, Founder Bob Summers was able to bootstrap the startup with a small budget and a couple of coders. The team joined the TechPad[3] co-working space to help them get moving quickly, surrounded by other software developers and an energetic environment. Friendeo is a free service which is accessible in the Android Market, Apple App Store, at Facebook and the Friendeo website[4].

“Our passion is to be the number one video browser available by providing an incredible end user experience,” explains Summers. “This vision drives our passion to build a product that will disrupt the current video entertainment industry. Our video aggregation platform utilizes real-time social media data to continuously find relevant and engaging video for each Friendeo user on any screen. And Rackspace Cloud Servers has really enabled us to build this idea at scale from day one.”

“As our user base grows, we will get better at providing an incredible and unique video entertainment experience. The nature of our system is that the more people that use it, the better it gets. One million Facebook friends are now fueling the Friendeo social video platform. This has resulted in over three million socially connected videos and it is growing every day. In 2012 we will grow that experience to more devices and add new capabilities to increase user enjoyment,” concludes Summers.

Social is changing the way we do everything: including video entertainment and Friendeo is organizing the world’s endless Internet video sources through a social context. Friendeo has made it so easy to watch Internet video that Mr. Springsteen might even be ready to disconnect his cable service. Do you have an idea for an application that could change the social landscape? If so, the Space Cowboys[5] are ready to enable the change. Find out what the Rackspace Startup Program[1] can do to empower your startup.